Stupidest Comic Book Storylines

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Ted_Breakfast said:
Every Joker plotline for the last decade hasn't been so much stupid as it is desperate. Everyone wants to make the next Death in the Family.
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Death of the family was the only good version of that as it was basically showing how tired the Joker had gotten with his plans being all reused from old books and Batman's own incompetence harming him more in the end. Death in the family wasn't that good to begin with its really only remembered because it killed Robin and Under the Red Hood, which cut all the story fat just to Robin's death. Under the Red Hood was then outdone by its film adaptation that cut out all fat from the comic like the superman cameos, moved the focus from Black Mask to Joker (which makes sense as Joker was who actually killed Jason), and removed the link to Infinite Crisis/Superboy prime (just using the Lazarus pit is a lot simpler then alternate pre crisis superman in a pocket dimension punches the 4th wall because he's a whiny fanboy). Grant Morrison had the best idea for a modern Joker by just saying the Joker reset personalities when he got too predictable allowing the Joker to be easily changed if he got too boring.
 
Tor Lugosi said:
To be fair, the first thirty or so years of Spider-Man are solid. You'd, of course, get the occasional stupid or overly goofy storyline but nothing character ruining.

The problems came with his marriage to MJ. For some reason idiots who don't actually read the comics think that it ruins his teenage appeal, even though the last time you could reasonably call him a teenager was like 1965. They also think he needs to be some sort of free swinging bachelor that bangs every woman in his life, even though that again goes against his actual character.

To try to fix this they first did the Clone Saga. In that they tried to reveal that the Peter fans have been reading about for the last twenty years (and thus the married one) was a clone and this new, commitment-free guy (Ben Reilly) was the 'real' one. The idea there is that Peter would have lost his powers, moved away to Portland with MJ (who'd have a baby), and Ben Reilly would then become the real Spider-Man. Of course fans rejected that stupid idea, so Ben ended up being the real clone and died, Peter got his powers back, moved back to New York, and MJ eventually had a miscarriage (sorta -- originally the nurse who over saw it would've been revealed to have stole the baby and given it to Norman Osborn but the idea was scrapped, though it did lead to the alternate universe series Spider-Girl).

A couple years after the Clone Saga ended they tried it again. In what's known as the New Chapter era, the shitty writer Howard Mackie just suddenly started writing Peter and MJ as if they were teenagers again and killed off MJ in a plane crash to get Peter out of the marriage. Fans yet again rejected this (I think this was the worst selling era of all time) and everyone realized making Peter a widower made him seem even older than the marriage did. So, ultimately, it was revealed that MJ escaped the plane at the last minute and the two were eventually reunited when J. Micheal Straczynski took over Spider-Man for a while (and the first couple of years of his work were really great).

Then they tried it for a third time with One More Day. I talked about that one already in this thread. This one lasted the longest but was still largely hated. It looks like Nick Spencer, the current main Spider-Man writer, is working towards getting MJ and Peter back together.

Really, it all comes down to the people in charge going "We know better the fans and we know what they secretly, truly want, even if they won't admit it. This is for the best."
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What’s really sad about this is if you read the issues where it’s written well, Peter and MJ’s marriage is one of the best parts of it. He was the hero driven by guilt, quips, and the fact that he didn’t want to see people being run over by supervillains. She was his moral center, and one of the primary reasons he still fought crime so long after his uncle’s death.
I remember the first time they killed Aunt May. Where she revealed to him that she had known he was Spider-Man for years. I liked that.
And his friendship and occasional team-ups with Daredevil, those were all good points.
 
Matthew216 said:
What’s really sad about this is if you read the issues where it’s written well, Peter and MJ’s marriage is one of the best parts of it. He was the hero driven by guilt, quips, and the fact that he didn’t want to see people being run over by supervillains. She was his moral center, and one of the primary reasons he still fought crime so long after his uncle’s death.
I remember the first time they killed Aunt May. Where she revealed to him that she had known he was Spider-Man for years. I liked that.
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I know it's extremely well-established why the deal with the devil happened, but also hack writers don't like happy couples, because they find them harder to write. You could say it's because they don't know what a healthy, happy relationship looks like, but it's really more that it's much easier to put obstacles in the way of two people getting together to generate conflict than it is to do in a stable relationship.

Writing a strong pairing requires more thought and the ability to make the 'happily ever after' interesting, and that's not easy to make believable when you can't even write your lead character as compelling or even likeable no matter how you try.

One of the things I did like about the Amazing Spiderman movies was in the second one, where Aunt May is talking to Peter and it becomes very clear that she knows he's Spiderman but isn't going to acknowledge it. I like all the movie Aunt Mays, actually, for different reasons, from the classic 'thin, elderly' of the Raimi films to the toughened gun-toter of Into the Spider-verse.
 
that time Aunt May went full keikaku on that one dude with her almond flavored cookies was pretty funny
 
Cool kitties club said:
This wasn't a popular story but fuck The Authority: Revolution. It starts off with a somewhat interesting concept of the Authority ruling America and having to come to terms with a revolution by golden age war time heroes however this plot is dropped 4 issues in for a far less interesting one involving :
Henry bendix (the leader of stormwatch a predecessor to the authority) returning.

Character wise the Authority was ruined. The Ellis/Millar Authority was a morally grey group which showed both the pros and cons of a politically active super team. In comparison this iteration of The Authority are smug unlikeable leftists who are so much smarter then everyone who are only good because the villains are all racist, homophobic capitalist nazis.

While the art isn't necessarily too bad it has a critical lack of action scenes and its a definite step down from Quietly's art; hell it cant even maintain the same level of quality as Nguyen's previous work on the authority.
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I actually liked this - and I really didn't like Millar's Authority because it didn't fit with the Wildstorm world at all (it was also puerile at various times and was Millar when he was at the peak of his Iraq War brokebrain period). I always thought the Authority were kind of arseholes, and Brubaker putting it front and centre I found interesting.

Full disclosure in that I like the other parts of Wildstorm more than the Authority and they never felt like they sat right in the setting to me - Wildstorm's meant to all be about the power structures in the world; shadowy conspiracies, corporations controlling things, all kinds of government groups trampling over people's rights just out of sight (Wildcats 3.0 was a really interesting look at what a superhero outfit in that kind of world might make changes to the good by co-opting some of that power structure for good ends)... The Authority as a big dumb outfit fighting these giant threats felt totally disconnected to everything else. Brubaker making them complete dickheads who were like children making amateurish efforts to tell everyone to do while being huge hypocrites interested me.
 
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Affluent Reptilian said:
I actually liked this - and I really didn't like Millar's Authority because it didn't fit with the Wildstorm world at all (it was also puerile at various times and was Millar when he was at the peak of his Iraq War brokebrain period). I always thought the Authority were kind of arseholes, and Brubaker putting it front and centre I found interesting.

Full disclosure in that I like the other parts of Wildstorm more than the Authority and they never felt like they sat right in the setting to me - Wildstorm's meant to all be about the power structures in the world; shadowy conspiracies, corporations controlling things, all kinds of government groups trampling over people's rights just out of sight (Wildcats 3.0 was a really interesting look at what a superhero outfit in that kind of world might make changes to the good by co-opting some of that power structure for good ends)... The Authority as a big dumb outfit fighting these giant threats felt totally disconnected to everything else. Brubaker making them complete dickheads who were like children making amateurish efforts to tell everyone to do while being huge hypocrites interested me.
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I think on a writing level Ellis and Brubaker are better then Millar (his writing reeks of crude 00s try hard) I found Millar's plots to be ultimately more interesting and enjoyable due to the combination of high stakes action (helped by quitely's great art) and high concept plots. I think the first 4 issues of Revolution are actually quite decent and an interesting inverse of the Authority's traditional role. After that the plot gets dragged down in pointless melodrama and a desperate attempt to return to the status quo. The anti-heroic sons of liberty are quickly thrown out the window for a villain that acts like the worst one note villains of Millar's run without the action or interesting plots. The crowning moment for me was at the end of Revolution where the characters sit around and talk about how everything is back to the way it was; a complete reversal of the orginal's message and themes. The Ellis Authority was the best writing wise, but the plots quite dull.
 
Stab You in the Back said:
Haha, she's so full of shit. Wonder Woman is a hero whose arch nemesis is a woman who looks like an extra from the movie Cats. WW has the same problem Thor does in that most of her rogue's gallery are generic monsters that don't have any staying power because they're fucking lame. Like how many times has she "dealt with" a minotaur, a hydra or a medusa over her career? Dozens? Hundreds?
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I like Dr. Psycho and Chang Tzu, but they've both slid into just being JL villains rather than WW villains. So, yeah, it's usually just Diana reenacting God of War plots that weren't particularly interesting the first time.
 
Affluent Reptilian said:
Yes. It was a narrow win for 'die'. Years later, it was revealed a lot of the calls had been from some guy with an auto-dialler.

The circumstances surrounding Todd's death were otherwise stupid. His mother was performing illegal abortions in Iran (they retconned this to some fictitious country but it wasoriginally Iran). Joker was for some reason there, too. To extract Todd's location, he threatened to tell the authorities about the abortion operation. The mother gave up Todd's location. By some contrivance I can't remember she then listened to Joker beating Todd to death with a crowbar and just kind of swallowed and moved on.

Also, Joker became Khomeinei's ambassador to the UN.
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What the fuck? Did i read something completely different? In my omnibus of A Death In The Family (has the story of Jason's death and how Tim became Robin) his mom was in Ethiopia helping relief efforts and Joker's was there to steal medical supplies to sell, is this a New 52 retcon?
 
Zaryiu said:
What the fuck? Did i read something completely different? In my omnibus of A Death In The Family (has the story of Jason's death and how Tim became Robin) his mom was in Ethiopia helping relief efforts and Joker's was there to steal medical supplies to sell, is this a New 52 retcon?
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You're right. The illegal abortions were in Ethiopia. The Joker did become Khomeini's UN representative, though.
 
Y2K Baby said:
Why would you get an abortion in Ethiopia
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The same reason troons chop their bits off in third world countries?

On topic: I have a love/hate relationship with the DC Injustice continuity (or lack thereof). For those that didn't follow/didn't care and only played the games for being games, I'll try giving a short summary.

The Joker (Because OF COURSE) ends up bombing Metropolis and due to convoluted shenanigans (where this was obviously written with either The Riddler or some other mastermind in place and only replaced with Joker because Bat-shilling) Supes is tricked into killing the pregnant Lois Lane. Brimming with great vengeance and furious anger, Superman gets sick of Bruce's Bat-bullshit about constantly keeping his sidehoe "ultra-dangerous psycho nemesis" alive way, way, way past the point anyone with common sense would have justifiably killed him, and ripped Joker's chest cavity wide open. This, however, meant that Batman immediately just declared Superman irredimable and walked away from the guy who recently had asked him to be the godfather of his unborn son, instead of, I dunno, at least look at his side of the situation.

And so, of course, this meant Superman became Super-Hitler, began a bromance with know intergalactic corrupt cop and war-criminal Sinestro, and commited a "soft coup" on every govt. on Earth while banging Wonder Woman and listening to Rotersand's "War on Error" on repeat in his iPod.

Of course, the first game ends well enough, with the "Prime"/general canon versions of the characters ending up on the Injustice dimension and basically calling all their counterparts on their bullshit (Even Prime Batman acknowledges his doppleganger is a shit friend) and solve the issue.

Of course, we all knew the sequel would come... and holy gee, did they find a way to make it worse.

After joining to defeat Brainiac, both Supes and Bats are too exceptional to compromise their viewpoints, but because Ed Boon is Bat-retarded, of course the Good ending is where Bruce is 100% right to be a misanthropic paranoid jackass and doesn't afraid of anything, while Supes redemption arc is immediately thrown out in favor of just wanting to take over the world using Brainiac's tech as last time "wasn't real Communism."

The fact that all of it is basically ripping off the Justice Lord arc off the DCAU makes me wish they had just adapted it whole instead of allowing Boon to fuck it up as hard as he did.
 
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Dang Woodchucks! said:
The same reason troons chop their bits off in third world countries?

On topic: I have a love/hate relationship with the DC Injustice continuity (or lack thereof). For those that didn't follow/didn't care and only played the games for being games, I'll try giving a short summary.

The Joker (Because OF COURSE) ends up bombing Metropolis and due to convoluted shenanigans (where this was obviously written with either The Riddler or some other mastermind in place and only replaced with Joker because Bat-shilling) Supes is tricked into killing the pregnant Lois Lane. Brimming with great vengeance and furious anger, Superman gets sick of Bruce's Bat-bullshit about constantly keeping his sidehoe "ultra-dangerous psycho nemesis" alive way, way, way past the point anyone with common sense would have justifiably killed him, and ripped Joker's chest cavity wide open. This, however, meant that Batman immediately just declared Superman irredimable and walked away from the guy who recently had asked him to be the godfather of his unborn son, instead of, I dunno, at least look at his side of the situation.

And so, of course, this meant Superman became Super-Hitler, began a bromance with know intergalactic corrupt cop and war-criminal Sinestro, and commited a "soft coup" on every govt. on Earth while banging Wonder Woman and listening to Rotersand's "War on Error" on repeat in his iPod.

Of course, the first game ends well enough, with the "Prime"/general canon versions of the characters ending up on the Injustice dimension and basically calling all their counterparts on their bullshit (Even Prime Batman acknowledges his doppleganger is a shit friend) and solve the issue.

Of course, we all knew the sequel would come... and holy gee, did they find a way to make it worse.

After joining to defeat Brainiac, both Supes and Bats are too exceptional to compromise their viewpoints, but because Ed Boon is Bat-exceptional, of course the Good ending is where Bruce is 100% right to be a misanthropic paranoid jackass and doesn't afraid of anything, while Supes redemption arc is immediately thrown out in favor of just wanting to take over the world using Brainiac's tech as last time "wasn't real Communism."

The fact that all of it is basically ripping off the Justice Lord arc off the DCAU makes me wish they had just adapted it whole instead of allowing Boon to fuck it up as hard as he did.
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Yeah playing the Injustice games really does feel like a less well done version of the Justice Lords (not to mention the Justice Lords had sick costumes). I didn’t read the comics (I want to though) but apparently Superman sides with Bane which is just insane. Justice Lord Superman was utterly convinced his way was right and still pretended to act like a good guy, while Regime Superman goes full psycho and allies himself with known villains. Not to mention, Bane being portrayed as an irredeemable monster like every bad writer does when he’s been shown to have a soft side.

On the subject of Bane, I just finished the 2012 reprints of Knightfall. The first volume was perfection. Bane was the main bad guy but so many other major Bat villains had time to shine. It all turns to hot shit pretty quick when Azrael takes over as Batman and I guess they just let Doug Moench go full exceptional individual and have him go against some of the lamest Batman villains he could think of. The Maniaxe, and Ballistic were awful, and half the book revolves around Abbatoir. The only new character of any interest was Tally Man and he isn’t around very long and the best part of the second volume was a two-part story featuring the Joker (who quickly realizes it’s not the real Batman). By volume 3 Bruce Wayne is back as Batman and Azrael is hastily defeated half way into the book. The rest of the book consists of Nightwing filling in as Batman in the “Prodigal” storyline being all beat up over one time he didn’t beat Two-Face. Gordon’s loss of faith in the Batman is never resolved, and apart from one page where he’s depicted as having gone crazy you never really figure out what happened to Azrael.

tl;dr if you read the 2012 reprints of Knightfall, just read volume 1. The rest, while well-written, is just a mish-mash of trash villains and unresolved stories.
 
Dang Woodchucks! said:
The same reason troons chop their bits off in third world countries?

On topic: I have a love/hate relationship with the DC Injustice continuity (or lack thereof). For those that didn't follow/didn't care and only played the games for being games, I'll try giving a short summary.

The Joker (Because OF COURSE) ends up bombing Metropolis and due to convoluted shenanigans (where this was obviously written with either The Riddler or some other mastermind in place and only replaced with Joker because Bat-shilling) Supes is tricked into killing the pregnant Lois Lane. Brimming with great vengeance and furious anger, Superman gets sick of Bruce's Bat-bullshit about constantly keeping his sidehoe "ultra-dangerous psycho nemesis" alive way, way, way past the point anyone with common sense would have justifiably killed him, and ripped Joker's chest cavity wide open. This, however, meant that Batman immediately just declared Superman irredimable and walked away from the guy who recently had asked him to be the godfather of his unborn son, instead of, I dunno, at least look at his side of the situation.

And so, of course, this meant Superman became Super-Hitler, began a bromance with know intergalactic corrupt cop and war-criminal Sinestro, and commited a "soft coup" on every govt. on Earth while banging Wonder Woman and listening to Rotersand's "War on Error" on repeat in his iPod.

Of course, the first game ends well enough, with the "Prime"/general canon versions of the characters ending up on the Injustice dimension and basically calling all their counterparts on their bullshit (Even Prime Batman acknowledges his doppleganger is a shit friend) and solve the issue.

Of course, we all knew the sequel would come... and holy gee, did they find a way to make it worse.

After joining to defeat Brainiac, both Supes and Bats are too exceptional to compromise their viewpoints, but because Ed Boon is Bat-exceptional, of course the Good ending is where Bruce is 100% right to be a misanthropic paranoid jackass and doesn't afraid of anything, while Supes redemption arc is immediately thrown out in favor of just wanting to take over the world using Brainiac's tech as last time "wasn't real Communism."

The fact that all of it is basically ripping off the Justice Lord arc off the DCAU makes me wish they had just adapted it whole instead of allowing Boon to fuck it up as hard as he did.
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I heard they completely ruined Wonder Woman's characterization .
 
Dang Woodchucks! said:
The same reason troons chop their bits off in third world countries?

On topic: I have a love/hate relationship with the DC Injustice continuity (or lack thereof). For those that didn't follow/didn't care and only played the games for being games, I'll try giving a short summary.

The Joker (Because OF COURSE) ends up bombing Metropolis and due to convoluted shenanigans (where this was obviously written with either The Riddler or some other mastermind in place and only replaced with Joker because Bat-shilling) Supes is tricked into killing the pregnant Lois Lane. Brimming with great vengeance and furious anger, Superman gets sick of Bruce's Bat-bullshit about constantly keeping his sidehoe "ultra-dangerous psycho nemesis" alive way, way, way past the point anyone with common sense would have justifiably killed him, and ripped Joker's chest cavity wide open. This, however, meant that Batman immediately just declared Superman irredimable and walked away from the guy who recently had asked him to be the godfather of his unborn son, instead of, I dunno, at least look at his side of the situation.

And so, of course, this meant Superman became Super-Hitler, began a bromance with know intergalactic corrupt cop and war-criminal Sinestro, and commited a "soft coup" on every govt. on Earth while banging Wonder Woman and listening to Rotersand's "War on Error" on repeat in his iPod.

Of course, the first game ends well enough, with the "Prime"/general canon versions of the characters ending up on the Injustice dimension and basically calling all their counterparts on their bullshit (Even Prime Batman acknowledges his doppleganger is a shit friend) and solve the issue.

Of course, we all knew the sequel would come... and holy gee, did they find a way to make it worse.

After joining to defeat Brainiac, both Supes and Bats are too exceptional to compromise their viewpoints, but because Ed Boon is Bat-exceptional, of course the Good ending is where Bruce is 100% right to be a misanthropic paranoid jackass and doesn't afraid of anything, while Supes redemption arc is immediately thrown out in favor of just wanting to take over the world using Brainiac's tech as last time "wasn't real Communism."

The fact that all of it is basically ripping off the Justice Lord arc off the DCAU makes me wish they had just adapted it whole instead of allowing Boon to fuck it up as hard as he did.
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I've heard the comics are better but the series engages in one of my least favorite tropes the "hero automaticaly becomes super hitler stalin after killing a villain" (The Batman who laughs also falls under this trope). The justice lords are a far better and more tragic story as they have all convinced themselves they are still heroes. Superman repeated suggests that everything he's done is just temporary until he takes care of things enough and the episode also had a great cold open which was a great shocker to grab your attention. Even other evil supermen like the communist one from Red Son and the nazi one from Mastermen are both shown to complex characters with the inherent goodness of superman in conflict with his indoctrination into horrible ideologies.
 
Cool kitties club said:
I've heard the comics are better but the series engages in one of my least favorite tropes the "hero automaticaly becomes super hitler stalin after killing a villain" (The Batman who laughs also falls under this trope). The justice lords are a far better and more tragic story as they have all convinced themselves they are still heroes. Superman repeated suggests that everything he's done is just temporary until he takes care of things enough and the episode also had a great cold open which was a great shocker to grab your attention. Even other evil supermen like the communist one from Red Son and the nazi one from Mastermen are both shown to complex characters with the inherent goodness of superman in conflict with his indoctrination into horrible ideologies.
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The comic is good when worldbuilding but utterly fucks up in actually developing why the characters make such decisions, such as "Clark hasn't been Superman that long" when nothing points to the Kents doing anything different when raising him, so even if he's been Superman maybe half-hour less than "our" Clark, his values should be the same.

Of course, this brings up the other driving question of this alternate universe: Why is doing the job Batman is too much of a pussy to do the catalyst for Clark to turn into the authoritative, fascistic, genocidal superdick-tater of Earth?

Without going into five years of prequel comics, we already know Clark has gone against the likes of Mongul, Starro, and fucking Darkseid! He has seen evil and punched it in the face, repeatedly! But it's the fucking Joker who drives him over the edge?! I get the personal loss (especially with the fact she was pregnant when she died) would have a stronger effect, but even the fucking Arrowverse writers get that a Superman that went through such trauma wouldn't just turn on everything he was raised on over a personal loss when things like Darkseid are out there, loose and chomping at the bit to fuck Earth's shit up.
 
TchPiKinmup said:
View attachment 1196895

preach on. I've always hated CW and felt its popularity signaled my time with superheroes in the past. The character decisions were baffling but continued on into all other stories. As much as I enjoyed the more recent Secret Wars crossover, Cap and Iron Man in particular acted like the same generic figureheads they were in CW and nobody batted an eye.
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Affluent Reptilian said:
You're right. The illegal abortions were in Ethiopia. The Joker did become Khomeini's UN representative, though.
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RCO075_1468896326.jpg RCO080_1468896326.jpg RCO093_1468896326 (1).jpg
Some relevant pages from my omnibus (Yes it's from a site online but it is the same page in both) so i guess they retconned this later to make her 100% evil unlike here where she regret what she did and tried to save him (i also read the pages besides this and it doesn't seem she was doing illegal abortion in Ethiopia but she was embezzling funds)

Oh here's something really dumb from last year https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/In...Bl13Y8X12OXB2YD62dNfpkgDyfXmlnzsOmmwxg39_rT1M
Injustice vs Masters of the Universe spinoff that follow Superman victory in Injustice 2, tl;dr things keep get worse and fuck the ending
 
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